Energy Absorbing Materials for Crashworthy Design of Aircraft: A Review

The crashworthiness design of an aircraft is a key method to avoiding catastrophic structural collisions and heavy casualties. Well-designed and selected energy absorbing materials can effectively improve the crashworthiness of aircraft. This paper provides a systematic introduction to the properties and applications of energy absorbing materials for the crashworthiness design of aircraft. New researches and applications of metallic, composite, and polymer materials in the field of crashworthiness in the last 30 years are reviewed, and new trends in energy absorbing materials such as magnetorheological and bionic materials are introduced. Finally, some suggestions for the development of energy absorbing materials are summarized.